From The Real Deal:Huang left his native Taiwan in 1974 at age 20 and settled in Flushing, Queens. A few years later, he married Alice Liu, heiress to Taiwan’s Haw Di-I Foods and Bull Head Barbecue Sauce fortunes and cousin to City Comptroller John Liu, a Democrat who is running for mayor.
While studying business at Queens College, Huang saw opportunity in Flushing’s many vacant properties and decided to go into the real estate business.
“I could not believe it,’’ Huang told the New York Times in 1997 of the empty land he saw around him. “How come nobody wants to buy it?’’
With the help of his wealthy father-in-law, Huang built seven high-rises and hundreds of houses. By the late 1980s, he had been credited with helping to revive downtown Flushing with projects such as the Golden Shopping Mall and Main Street Tower, a nine-story office building. In 1986, Huang paid $3.4 million for the dilapidated RKO Keith’s movie theater on Northern Boulevard in Flushing. Huang closed the landmark and began work on the site, with plans to develop it into a major shopping center.
Soon, Huang caught the eye of the Democratic political machine, which at the time was led by then-Queens Borough President Donald Manes. Working with Manes to encourage business development, Huang solidified his ties with the Queens political establishment, which helped him evolve into one of the most powerful real estate developers in the borough.
“They were grooming Tommy to be the fair-haired boy,” said Jerry Rotondi, a member of the Committee to Save the RKO Keith’s and a long-time critic of Huang.
“He was the symbol of the revitalization,” State Senator Leonard Stavisky told the New York Times in 1997. “But it was wrong to entrust so much of it to Tommy Huang.’’
It’s been suggested that Huang’s political ties with the city comptroller and others could partially explain the city’s inaction.
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